


perhaps when we have returned

by erzi



Category: Sarai-ya Goyou | House of Five Leaves
Genre: M/M, Manga Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24048718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erzi/pseuds/erzi
Summary: He offers Yaichi the needles on his palm. "Would you care to try as well, Yaichi-dono?""I don't know how to." He cups his elbows, head turned away."I can show you, if you would like."He doesn't reply. A little breeze catches loose ends of his tied-up hair, twitching them back and forth.Masa smiles to himself, fond and melancholy at once. "Perhaps when we have returned," he says, focusing again on the braid.
Relationships: Akitsu Masanosuke/Yaichi | Seinoshin
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	perhaps when we have returned

The ground is as pale as the sky – were it not for the congregation of trees, winter-barren, hunched here and to the horizon, it would seem to Masa the world had swallowed him whole and he'd been left to wonder in its lack of color forever. No other life's breath stirs the thin air but Yaichi's, walking in front of Masa. Wisps rise above Yaichi's bent back, though he could be exhaling warmth into his hands, thinned by his imprisonment. Months may have passed since then, but the ugliest aspects of time have ways of branding people.

Suddenly, Yaichi stops. He veers off the path for the side, where no feet have tread, where the snow gathers pristinely. His sandals leave hollow impressions, marks that someone living has crossed here, and Masa follows.

They stop at a snowy lump, gray peeking out. Stone?

Yaichi swipes the snow off with his sandal, his foot free in the cold, and it makes him shake a little. It is likely it isn't just the cold, but Masa stays silent.

It is a grave, and Yaichi has freed the buried stranger as well as their name. There is no birth date nor a date of death. Just a stone inscribed with the name of a man who once existed, and has left this as proof.

"Dead in a forest," Yaichi says, the first words in some time, and the sound of something in this long, silent walk – something as familiar as Yaichi's voice, especially – breaks the ice off Masa's ears. "What a way to go." He sounds flat, matching the downward angle to his shoulders, to his mouth.

Yaichi is seeing something else here other than the literal, and Masa averts his eyes, feeling intrusive.

It is how he sees another lump in the snow a little to the side of the grave. He rounds Yaichi and goes to his knees, fluttering the snow away with the kindness of chasing butterflies. Feeling is soon lost in his hands, the cold so intense it becomes heat, pulsing redly in his fingertips.

There is a protest beginning on Yaichi's lips, and it dies swiftly, with another grave revealed.

"The stone seems to be the same age as the grave you found, Yaichi-dono," Masa says, looking up at him. "They must have died around the same time." He looks back to the grave. The name is ambiguous in gender. "I wonder who they were." He stands. "As well as who buried them."

"Probably dead themselves," Yaichi says. "This stone is old. The engravings are almost weathered smooth." He toes snow onto the grave. "In a decade, they'll be unreadable."

With no one to tend them, they're in disrepair. Masa draws his eyebrows together, mouth set. He glances about: at the snow falling, and that which has already fallen on the trees and ground. Deciduous trees have shed their leaves, but the evergreens retain their needles, presently heavy and white.

Masa reaches up to the lowest pine branch, brushing the snow from the fine leaves. He plucks several, palming half, while keeping the rest at his fingertips. He braids them. "There are no flowers to leave as offerings, so I am making pine needles into something more appropriate," he says, not needing to look at Yaichi to know he eyes him with equal amusement and bemusement – he nearly always does, and he would especially with an action as strange and impulsive as this.

"And where did you learn how to do this?"

"Okinu-dono." Down and up his fingers go, gentle with the leaves lest they break, lest his efforts be ruined. "It is not difficult." He offers Yaichi the needles on his palm. "Would you care to try as well, Yaichi-dono?"

"I don't know how to." He cups his elbows, head turned away.

"I can show you, if you would like."

He doesn't reply. A little breeze catches loose ends of his tied-up hair, twitching them back and forth.

Masa smiles to himself, fond and melancholy at once. "Perhaps when we have returned," he says, focusing again on the braid.

He'd had time to practice, months before, weaving grass in the summer. He'd made pitiful braids that easily came undone. This one holds together well. It isn't as fine as something of Okinu's doing, but it is worthy of an offering. He leaves it on the grave he'd uncovered. The next braid is finished a little faster, his fingers better remembering how it works, workable warmth in his hands. He sweeps the snow Yaichi had gathered on the grave and lays the braid down.

"Yaichi-dono," he says, "would you pray with me?"

Yaichi's eyes drift to him slowly, and then they drop to the snow at Masa's feet. "I didn't take you for someone who prays."

Masa clasps his hands together. "I think we owe these nameless people that much, at least. Who knows when they last heard a voice?"

Yaichi flicks his eyes to the graves, drawing them half-close, and then they flutter shut with a small sigh. That is plenty from him, and Masa closes his own eyes, exchanging his smile for the solemnness of a prayer.

When he opens his eyes, he sees Yaichi has cast his face up. At this angle, Yaichi's eyes are hidden; if they remain closed or if they have opened, Masa does not know. The snow falls on Yaichi's face, resting on his cheeks.

"Did you pray for Yaichi when you found him?" Yaichi asks the heavens.

The first Yaichi, he means. The man whose name he'd donned under cruel circumstances, in false belief of his betrayal, sardonically twisting the once-pure name with worse atrocities by his hand. But the first Yaichi had never done what the broken Yaichi had been told of. A name, perfect, and ruined.

"I did," Masa says. "Yagi-dono asked me to. I thought to do the same for whoever these two were."

"I see," Yaichi replies after a moment. He turns and begins walking in the direction they'd come in. Back home, the new home they've all built for themselves. And no final things to say to these nameless bodies, dead however long. Nothing to concern himself about – and all of it forced, Masa has learned.

 _Do they remind you too much of what you've done, Yaichi-dono?_ he asks him within the privacy of his own head. Yaichi is culpable for countless corpses, so undignified and worthless they were never buried, never paid respects. Just disposed of, as coldly as the blade that had gutted them.

And then there is Yaichi – the one buried, forgotten but by the man in front of Masa and the one they've left behind in Edo. The man in front of Masa carries that death heavier than the many others he is responsible for. Near as soon as he'd known of it, he'd had to leave the town where the grave is. The grave, visited once. With their banishment, it will always remain so.

And so then there is Yaichi – the one walking, head bowed to the snow.

Masa calls out his name.

He turns. The snowflakes have melted on his face, tear-like. Unless there is also salt mixed with the freshwater. It could be so.

Masa takes no chances: reverently he walks to Yaichi, he is not a threat, will never be; he seeks only to close the distance, to put his hand to Yaichi's cheek – cool with the air and the snow, but with telling human warmth beneath it all – and assure him as much as himself they are both alive.

"You have not left him," Masa says, as Yaichi's eyes widen. He thumbs away the snowflakes, or tears, or both. Yaichi's face is cleaned, and so Masa removes his hand to take Yaichi's, where blood neither can see still stains it. "It has been a long time since he died. He does not rest in Edo anymore. He has become the earth that housed him. The wind has dispersed that and scattered him. He could have been brought here, by storm or under someone's feet." He carefully flips over Yaichi's hand, seeing the lines crossing his palm like the paths that have led them here. "The earth around him would have seen rain. And when the rain rose dry to the heavens, part of him could have been in that water, to fall as the snow where we are."

Masa is smiling as he looks up, but it softens more when he sees Yaichi's expression: dismayed, and so utterly wanting to believe. Yaichi curls his fingers as if he means to pull away, but he presses down his hand onto Masa's as if he means to have his skin be part of him. "It is the natural order of things he has returned to, as will we all. You have not left him, Yaichi-dono. He has followed you."

Yaichi makes a quiet sound. "You would say something like that, wouldn't you, and wholly believe it," he says, but there is no biting accusation in it. It is just the truth, spoken past the beginning of a smile. He frees his hand, gently, and turns back around. "You're embarrassing, Masa," he says, face hidden, smile audibly dawned. His voice is lighter, not in the false glibness he'd smoothed over his tongue for years, but lighter from a heaviness toppled. That it's alright to think these things, if Masa says them.

It's part of why Masa had said it: it is his genuine belief, yes, but if he can speak and tease out the things Yaichi longs for and thus represses – if _he_ can speak them, then they're alright to believe.

For Yaichi, he will speak of anything.

"Let's go home," Yaichi says, beckoning him with a tilt of the head. An invitation to walk by him, not behind.

Masa goes to his side.

Home awaits.

**Author's Note:**

> let's ignore the fact the water cycle wasn't mainstream accepted til embarrassingly late. masa was ahead of his time or smth


End file.
